Commento su Numeri 14:29

וכל פקדיכם לכל מספרכם AND ALL OF YOU THAT WERE NUMBERED IN ANY COUNTING OF YOU — i.e. all that are numbered of you in any census (מספר) in which you are numbered, as, for instance, on going to or coming back from war, or when giving the shekels: all who are numbered in all these censuses shall die, and these are, everyone מבן עשרים שנה וגו׳ FROM TWENTY YEARS OLD AND UPWARDS — The age is expressly mentioned to exclude the tribe of Levi because those who were numbered of them were not from twenty years old and upwards (but they were either numbered from one month old — cf. Numbers 3:40, or from thirty years old; Numbers 4:3) (Bava Batra 121b).

מבן עשרים שנה..אשר הלינותם, "from the age of twenty and up..because you have complained against Me." We must try and understand why G'd said אשר הלינתם. If the word אשר is to be equivalent to על אשר (the way we have translated it), then there is nothing new here. G'd had mentioned this already in verse 27!

במדבר הזה יפלו פגריכם, “your carcasses will drop in this desert.” It appears that the Israelites’ guilt in this episode could be divided into three levels. Some of them had wept, some of them had complained against Moses and Aaron saying: “if only we had died already.” The third level consisted of the people who had said: “let us appoint a leader and head back for Egypt” (verse 4). The reason the Torah mentions the word “your carcasses” three times is to allude to these different levels of the people. The choice of the word “your carcasses,” which at first glance seems very harsh, is actually the reverse. It means that only the bodies of these people would die, they would not lose their entitlement to life in the hereafter. (Compare Rabbi Eliezer in Sanhedrin 105 and 110). This allusion is repeated in verse 35: “in this desert they will expire and there they will die.” The words: “all of you who have been numbered for military service,” mean that the Levites were excluded from this decree as they had not been part of the army and when they had been numbered the babies of one month old were already included in that count (Baba Batra 121).

V. 29. פגריכם: die zunächst Angeredeten sind die die stimmführende Volksgemeinde bildenden Glieder des Volkes (V. 2), die die Anklage formuliert und vorgebracht. וכל פקדיכם sind alle die sonstigen selbständigen, für den Dienst der Gesamtheit verpflichteten Männer von zurückgelegtem zwanzigsten Jahre aufwärts, auf welche die Gesamtheit zu zählen hat und die daher für die Gesamtheit gezählt werden (siehe Kap. 1). An diesem mannhaften Kern des Volkes hätten die Machinationen der zurückgekehrten Kundschafter scheitern müssen und vor allem hätten die intelligenten Wortführer ihren Einfluss dahin geltend machen sollen. Statt dessen haben eben diese Einflussreichen die allgemeine Unzufriedenheit zur formulierten Klage und zu offenem Aufruhr gebracht (Verse 2-4). Es ist begreiflich, dass alle die Männer מבן עשרים ומעלה als die Schuldigen behandelt werden.

מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה, “from twenty years and up.” Seeing that this was the age at which the male Israelites began to bear arms, it was that group who had been afraid to rely on G-d’s help.”

It appears that these words were necessary in view of G'd having spoken of the decree applying to the people who were twenty and over. We might have interpreted this to mean that anyone 20 years of age at the time of the decree was included in the decree that he had to die in the desert. As a result, men who had not been twenty years old at the time of the Exodus would be included in this decree. To make it clear that this was not so, the Torah says אשר הלינתם, people who were 20 years old from the time you started complaining, i.e. immediately after the Exodus. If anyone of the complainants had been twenty years old at the time he complained, he was now included in the group of people to whom this decree applied. This is precisely what G'd had meant when He told Moses in verse 22 that the Israelites had tested Him already ten times.

Perhaps the generation in question did not notice this nuance of the verse as to who was and who was not included in the decree and they thought that the decree applied only to people who had turned twenty as of that day. As a result of such a faulty interpretation they examined who had died in the fortieth year of their wanderings on the night of the ninth of Av. They found then that not a single one had died on that night. When they checked for the next 5 nights and found that not a single Israelite died during those nights either, they declared the 15th of Av of that year as a day of rejoicing concluding that the decree had come to an end (compare introduction to Midrash Eycha Rabbah.) It is difficult to understand why they should have expected anyone to die during the night of the ninth of Av in that year unless they had misunderstood the meaning of who was included in the description "from twenty years and over."

Possibly, G'd had couched the decree in a language which permitted more than one interpretation, something G'd is fond of doing on occasion. The reason G'd couches something in ambivalent language is to allow for a more lenient interpretation if the people deserve it, or for a more stringent interpretation in the event the people do not deserve it. A classic example of what I have in mind is Genesis 2,17 where G'd warned man not to eat from the tree of knowledge on pain of death. The "death" warning is phrased as follows: "for on the day you eat from it you will surely die." This could be taken to mean that death would be practically instantaneous, i.e. the very same day, or it could be taken to mean that on that day man would become mortal but that death might still be a long way off and that the "day" G'd spoke of was the amount of time He considered a "day" in His calendar, i.e. 1000 years in our time. If Adam would repent, G'd would apply the latter interpretation, if not, He would let Adam die within 24 hours after he had eaten from the fruit of that tree. In our verse G'd also used ambivalent language when the Torah wrote אשר הלינתם. The expression lends itself to two interpretations. 1) על אשר הלינותם, "because you have complained." 2) "from the time you have started to complain the first time," as we explained earlier. G'd meant that if the Israelites would repent and behave from now on He would apply the more lenient of the two interpretations, i.e. only people who had reached the age of twenty before the episode of the spies would die. If the people would become guilty of further misdemeanours, G'd would consider all those who had been twenty years at the time of the first complaint as included in this decree. When G'd had mentioned that the Israelites had tested Him ten times, He referred to the majority of the complainers. When the people realised on the night of the ninth of Av in the fortieth year that no one had died, they celebrated as the decree had finally been lifted from those who had left Egypt while under twenty years of age but had been 20 years of age when the decree was pronounced.